6 Ways to Guarantee a More Effective Performance Review

There are some things in life that are just plain annoying. Robocalls. People who take up two parking spaces. Leaving the house and noticing that your phone isn’t charged.

You know what else we’ll add to that list? Performance reviews.

Now, the idea behind performance reviews is certainly good. Who can’t get behind the idea that feedback is good? That managers should regularly tell employees what they’re doing well and what they need to work on? Ideally, at least, performance reviews put everybody on the same page, and give people tools to do their jobs better.

Unfortunately, here’s how it usually works:

1. Two days before performance review. Manager looks at her calendar, realizes she has to write ten reviews. Freaks out.
2. Racks her brain trying to remember what all ten employees on her team have been doing for the last six months. Puts same two accomplishments — both projects completed in the last two weeks – on all team members’ review sheets.
3. Begins to write individual comments. Thinks about all the other work she has to do. Decides to just copy and paste her comments from last year. (Note: comments from last year are themselves copied from the previous year’s reviews.)
4. Meets with employees individually. Tells each s/he is doing “fine,” and to “keep it up.” Gives all employees rating of “above average.”
5. Employee takes review, files in back of desk, gets back to work.
6. Six months later, same cycle repeated.

Sound familiar? This is why performance feedback reviews get a bad rap: it’s not the idea behind them; it’s the way they’re usually done.

So let’s fix that! Let’s make performance feedback reviews as useful as they can be!

To start, here are some suggestions:

1. Have Managers Take Regular Notes on Their Employees

One way to improve performance reviews is to have managers take regular notes. Every two weeks, say, managers should briefly write down both what and how well each employee has done. Then, when it comes time for actual performance feedback, they have a nice well to draw from. It's also extremely useful to see employees' notes. If you have a time tracker that allows or requires daily notes, those can help shape feedback immensely as well.

Although, having managers take consistent notes has the added benefit of forcing managers to pay attention to their team, so that they can tackle potential issues before they come to a head. Since it does give managers more work, it’s best if this kind of regular note-taking is an explicit part of managers’ job descriptions.

2. Limit the Information

Seems logical that performance feedback should include lots of helpful information. Not so. In fact when performance reviews contain too much feedback, it gets harder for employees to focus on the bigger, most important issues.

Better is to limit things to two or three main ideas — good and bad. This keeps things specific, and gives the employee a manageable set of goals. Ask yourself, “what’s the most important thing this employee needs to know?” Then explain that one thing as clearly as possible.

3. No Criticism Without a Program for Improvement

Too many performance reviews give criticism without also providing strategies for improvement. To fix this, managers should pledge to not give criticism unless they also provide a program, involving both employee and manager, to fix the problem.

This, too, means more work on the manager’s part: the manager has to figure out what they can do to help their employee. But it also tells the employee that the company is committed to their success, puts everyone on the same page, and more deeply invests the manager in their employee’s progress.

4. Have Employees Explain What They Heard

Performance reviews often resemble lectures: one person talks, and one person listens. To make sure that information is actually communicated, however, you need to give the employee the chance to explain what they took from the meeting.

This is something teachers know: you know your students have understood you when they can put what you’ve said in their own language. Do the same for employees. Let them tell you what they’ve just heard. This activity both forces employees to acknowledge and internalize what’s been said, and turns the review into an actual conversation.

5. Be a Coach, Not a Judge

Often, performance reviews go wrong because of attitude: managers and employees can forget they’re working together to achieve a larger goal. The fix to this is to encourage managers to think of themselves as coaches, not judges. While judges are there to decide what’s right and wrong, coaches are there to put their players in the best position to succeed.

This is because above all, the coach’s job is to win. And they know they’ll win more if they can improve their players. Likewise with managers: their goals should be for the company to succeed. Keep that in mind, and you’ll see the value of helping employees get better at their jobs.

6. Avoid the “Like Me” Syndrome

A few years ago the EEOC (that’s the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) found that performance reviews were often colored by the degree to which an employee resembled their manager: employees who were the same gender, ethnicity, religion, national origin, or age as their managers tende to be reviewed better than those who weren’t. The EEOC dubbed this the “like me” syndrome.

Avoiding this one is difficult, since it mostly happens unconsciously. But it’s worth the effort. Basing reviews on objective metrics (sales per month, etc.) can help. So can simply staying aware of one’s inclinations, or even looking back on the reviews one has given over the past few years, looking out for trends of this sort.